She's a nonagenarian who, when dressed in black, looks a little like a bobble-head with a pipe-cleaner body. But, at the age of 91, entertainer Carol Channing has amazing energy and a rare spirit for life.

After the bombardment of "artistic" movies we have seen in the past month or so it is nice to have a movie that just simply entertains. That is exactly what Man on a Ledge does, and does it with success.

Packaged as a slick spy film, Haywire's been mildly poo-pooed by some critics but there's another way to see it: as a significant take on commerce and the tensions between men and women, and on a continuum with an earlier work, The Girlfriend Experience.

With Soderbergh's Ocean's 11 heist series over, the director is clearly looking for another genre franchise to do for fun between his more challenging and experimental pieces. Haywire fits that description.

Despite what no doubt were state-of-the-art visual effects thanks to the involvement of LucasFilm, Red Tails is further proof that visual tricks and flashily edited action sequences aren't enough to make a movie interesting.

Absorbing and fully understanding this movie is work. You must give your full and undivided attention to process every minute detail -- it could be a clue! Better think twice before that large popcorn and soda.

Having read all three of Stieg Larsson's novel trilogy featuring his super heroine Lisbeth Salander, and having seen all three of the Swedish movies adapted from those books as well as the American version, I have arrived at one conclusion: the Swedes win.

This year has produced two films that explore minority attitudes toward sexuality: Rashaad Ernesto Green's Gun Hill Road, and now Dee Rees' Pariah, which explores the life of one young black woman whose parents are in deep denial about the fact that she's a lesbian.

Based on the popular children's book that inspired the Tony-winning Broadway production, War Horse is exactly what it advertises itself to be: a schmaltzy tale of a boy and his horse, set against the backdrop of British poverty and World War I.

MI: Ghost Protocol is fun in the right places, funny in the right places, and the skillful dispatching of returned and recruited personnel, onscreen and off, points the way to several more entries in this series before it ever need worry about self-destructing.